When decorating your home it is vital your walls and ceilings are prepared for paint, with the Dulux Primer Paint. This brilliant paint can be used on MDF, tiles, melamine and UPVC surfaces, preparing them to be painted on. Whether it’s inside or outside this paint will be perfect. It provides excellent adhesion on difficult interior and exterior surfaces Dulux’s primer is easy to apply and will get your surfaces ready to be redecorated.

If you want a good smooth paint finish on your MDF, there isn’t any real alternative to priming or sealing. Medium-density fibreboard is made from small wood fibres such as sawdust and shavings, which are mixed with resin and wax and compressed into panels. It is not fond of water as this can make the board swell. So it needs to be treated - or primed or sealed - before you consider painting it. It is a trade product and his means superior quality to general commercially bought paints and primers These days most people want to get rid of any textured coatings, but believe it or not they are still being sold - not only as a decorative feature (mainly for ceilings) but as a cover-up solution for tatty surfaces. "Coarse" and "ripple" finishes are applied with a roller; others have to be applied using a wide filling knife. Frankly, these are best avoided as they generally look horrible - if surfaces are really bad, it is best to get them skimmed.

Dulux Difficult Surface Primer Reviews

The big issue with MDF is the edges, these are more porous than the top/bottom of the board and need more attention. To get a really smooth non-porous finish on the edges you can use wood filler or MDF edging tape. If the edges aren’t going to be seen simply add an extra coat of sealer/primer and rub down. What Alternatives are There to Specialist MDF Primers and Sealers? Paint undercoat also protect your walls and surfaces and prepare them for the top coat, providing a neutral base for you to apply any colour, however bold it may be. Primer paint is essential if you're changing a colour scheme from a dark shade to something lighter, helping to show your topcoats true colour while keeping it vibrant for longer. Zinsser B-I-N, which let’s be honest you’re going to have in your van anyway. I didn’t test it on oil-based gloss or on melamine, but it did really well on varnish and woodstain. It’s hard to review in a way, as everyone already knows it and there has been so much written about it online, I don’t think there’s anything I can add! Available online here.

The number one thing to remember for how to paint newly plastered walls is to make sure they’re completely dry first. To get started, lay down dust sheets and mask off skirting boards, trim and fixtures. As fresh plaster acts like a sponge, it’s important to water down your first layer of emulsion, otherwise known as a ‘mist coat’, to seal the surface and use less paint. The two top coats don’t need to be watered down. Therefore, once it’s dry simply paint as you normally would with your favourite colour. Crown PX3 (for those who can’t remember, this is the solvent-based one). This is a bit of an anomaly. It did absolutely everything it said on the tin, adhesion was great and it stopped the woodstain bleeding through. Overall, it was probably marginally the best of the bunch in terms of adhesion. But I don’t like it! Sorry Crown – I love you really, the guys at my local CDC will kill me, but I don’t like this product. Maybe it’s just me, but I found:The key thing to consider here, is how the price of Dulux Difficult Surface Primer compares to others but taking into account the quality and features of Dulux Difficult Surface Primer over the other options. Paint over knots with "knotting", otherwise the sap in them will bleed through subsequent coats of paint. Apply wood primer followed by an undercoat (or an all-in-one). Use an oil-based undercoat with oil-based gloss or eggshell paint. Products for more severely damaged surfaces are more closely related to plaster than paint, but for those nor wanting to employ a professional plasterer, there are supposedly "easy to use" options available that are generally non-toxic, with a low-VOC content. Not all are popular on the DIY chat boards, though, and they're not cheap, either ...

MDF Unpainted MDF needs sealing before painting. Use a specialist sealant such as Johnstone's MDF primer followed by an undercoat, before glossing or eggshelling. Most of the primers I tested did a decent job. I have to say, I was put off Zinsser 1-2-3 Bullseye, and Tikkurila Otex Akva to some extent as they performed less well than the others on melamine specifically in this test, and to be honest, if you can find one primer that will work brilliantly on all surfaces, surely that keeps life simple?! So for now I’ll ignore those two, and concentrate on the ones that performed consistently well in my test: Before painting any surface, it should be free from dirt, grease, rust, dust and loose flakes of old paint. Some require primers and/or undercoats to provide a base suitable for painting ... We will be happy to organise an exchange for the correct goods at no extra charge to yourself, please get in touch to organise this. Faulty Items

Again, for this part of the test I had run out of Whitsons, so the four products tested were Zinsser B-I-N, Zinsser AllCoat, Crown PX3 and Crown PX4.